


An archetype of the fallen

by highfunctioning_homosapien



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Supernatural, Destiel - Freeform, M/M, Wings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-22
Updated: 2013-04-17
Packaged: 2017-12-06 09:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/733904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/highfunctioning_homosapien/pseuds/highfunctioning_homosapien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a burst of blinding, white hot light that sears through his retinas, and he imagines that this is what it must be like for a human to behold an angel's Grace- and then it's gone. All feeling, thought, emotion, sense is extinguished like a match stick in the wind.</p><p>Dean and Sam Winchester are hunters of supernatural beings, from demons and ghosts, to wendigos and shape shifters. Everything they come across they salt 'n' burn, or at least exorcise. Everything they'd come across had been evil... until now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shot down in flames

**Author's Note:**

> So this is an AU that has been floating around my head for some time. It's more or less the same universe, up until season 4, but Cas and Dean meet in a rather different way. The rating may change, but for now it's pretty PG. Destiel is the only pairing.

A 1967 Chevrolet Impala sped down a deserted highway, the wheels spraying up a mist of water from the damp asphalt and the headlamps the only light illuminating the road, aside from the waning moon. Dean Winchester sat alone in the driver's seat, singing along to ACDC's  _shot down in flames._ Dean drummed his fingers on the steering wheel absentmindedly along to the song, humming the chorus. The music blasting out of the car's stereo along with the roar of the tyres blocked out the distant rumble of thunder from the heavens, boding for hellish weather ahead. Unaware of this omen, Dean carried on singing, pressing his foot to the accelerator a little more and enjoying the ride back to the motel he and his brother had booked earlier. He was looking forwards to a shower and some good pizza after being stuck in a car for most of the day, whilst Sam had been researching in the local area for clues on their current case- seemingly a vengeful witch with a taste for successful businessmen.

Dean eventually noticed the weather as a lightning bolt flashed overhead, illuminating a patch of ashen clouds for a second. He raised his eyebrows at the sky before shaking his head, "just what we damn need" he muttered under his breath, as another bolt of electricity snaked its way across the stratosphere. He leant to the side in his seat, ignoring the lightning, to change tapes and suddenly felt a tremor like an earthquake rattle the car.

"What the-" Dean didn't have time to finish his sentence as a beam of pure, white light blazed across the firmament, leaving blue spots in front of the hunter's eyes. He squinted up through the windscreen of the Impala, slowing the car down to 40mph. The lightning -or whatever it was- grew in size as it neared Dean, its speed ripping through the sound barrier causing more thunder to shake the ground beneath the Impala. Dean swore loudly as the ball of light careered towards him, its path neither changing nor seeming to slow. He jerked the steering wheel sideways, wincing as the tyres screeched on the wet road. The car turned, almost 360 degrees, as Dean slammed the breaks down, narrowly avoiding what would have most likely been a fatal collision with a meteor; or at least that's what Dean assumed it to be in the few seconds he had before the impact.

The object smashed into the ground with an almost deafening crack. Shockwaves sent the Impala flying onto its side and into a ditch by the side of the road. Dean felt the car lurch as he lost all sense of his bearings, apart from the fact that he was pinned to the leather seat by his seatbelt. He squeezed his eyes shut just as the windscreen shattered into his face, the tiny shards of glass clawing at his skin as they flew passed. With his hearing had been reduced to a dull ringing, his vision completely blacked out and dizzying sensation of being upside down, Dean felt the world start to slip away into a familiar mist, and he let himself black out, ignoring the small voice in the back of his mind telling him it would hurt a lot more when he woke up.

* * *

Dean came to with a small groan. He felt the mist of unconsciousness slowly fade away, only to be replaced with a pain, starting from the top of his head, through his skull and into his brain and spreading to every extremity. He weakly spat out a mouthful of blood and began to assess the damage.

He could move his legs, though one seemed to have gone to sleep as he was hit with a wave of pins and needles as he lifted it slightly. His arms were in a similar state, though covered in minor scratches along with bits of glass, which he just about managed to brush from his hair and clothing. His torso was in a considerably worse state however: he suspected a broken rib, as it hurt to breathe and was tender to touch. He managed to smirk a little at the fact that his face wasn't badly damaged at all, apart from a gash above his eyebrow, though that had almost scabbed over, so it was too late to bother and try to stitch it up.

He lay still for a few moments, mustering up the energy to drag himself from the frame of the car out of a door window. He scrabbled around on the road before picking himself up, trying not to wince too much at the pain in his side.

"Aw baby... I'm so sorry." He murmured to the car, running a hand through his hair. How the hell was he going to get back to Sam now? He checked his pockets but only found his knife. His mobile must have slipped out somewhere whilst he was being attacked by the sky and thrown through the air.

 _Shit_.

Dean spun around, wielding the knife as he searched for whatever had caused this mess in the first place. The impact site wasn't hard to find; a substantial crater a few yards from Dean's Impala had been left, the edges of which were still smoking a little. Dean stepped cautiously into the crater, broken bits of tarmac crunching under his boots. He held the knife out in front of him, wary of any movement, though he didn't know what he expected to find. Aliens? He snorted at the thought. If anything remained, it would probably just be a bit of space rock he could take back for Sam. The little nerd would probably worship him forever as well.

However, Dean did not find space junk. As he took a few steps nearer to the middle of the crater, he found a human sized shape. He raised the knife again, frowning deeply. Getting closer, he could make out that the person seemed to be male. And naked. Luckily for Dean, he was draped in some sort of black fabric, covering him from waist to calf.

A slight breeze picked up and rustled the fabric atop the man and Dean realised it wasn't fabric at all. The moon illuminated slivers of dark feather's, almost silver in the moonlight. Dean opened his mouth but found he had nothing at all to say. He wasn't even sure what to think. He crouched down beside the man, peering at his face. It was scraped badly on one side, small pieces of gravel still stuck in the wounds. His nose also had a crust of dried blood around it, which had merged with the fresh blood around his pale lips. Dean dropped the knife after deciding that a naked dead dude was unlikely to do much other than confuse him.

As Dean sat back on his heels, he noticed that the man's left arm was bent at a sickeningly wrong angle. He tried to move it, but as he reached his hand down he discovered that the man was not covered in feathers exactly. The feathers were  _attached_  to him. Or more precisely, wings were attached to him. Two large, black wings sprouted forth from somewhere on his back and had folded themselves around him, though one, like his arm, was twisted into a weird position under him.

"The fuck..." Dean breathed quietly. What was this thing? He didn't have much time to contemplate the answer as the winged man before him spluttered, his chest heaving as he tried to draw breath. Dean swore again, looking up into the man's face just as he opened his eyes.

Dean suddenly felt like he was falling, or drowning, or something. He couldn't think too clearly when eyes were looking him at like that. They were bluer than blue, like the sky and the ocean combined, but brighter and infinitely more compelling. Dean suddenly felt like he was being searched, turned inside out, picked apart and put back together again and then being picked apart all over again. He broke the gaze, suddenly feeling hot. He coughed and immediately regretted it as he felt a shooting pain in his side. The man tried to lift himself up with a groan, eyebrows knitting together in concentration.

"Hey, wait there." Dean told him, his voice seeming too loud in the almost darkness. He got up; ignoring his aching muscles and ran to the broken Impala. After a few moments he successfully located his duffle bag and dragged it onto the road. He grabbed a clean t-shirt, underwear and some jeans before jogging back to the crater site. The hunter crouched back down and passed the clothes to the man, who had managed to sit up and was shivering in the cold. Dean frowned again and turned around.

"Put those on and tell me when you're done 'kay?" He said gruffly, glad of the little light around them to protect the guy's- or maybe Dean's- dignity.

"I'm done." Spoke the man after a few moments of rustling. Dean turned around to find the man on his knees, cradling his left arm in the other, the t-shirt lying on the ground beside him. His voice was oddly deep and gravelly, as if he hadn't used it in some time, though Dean was pretty sure his sounded the same after waking up from being unconscious. The man blinked a few times before coughing violently, blood spraying from his mouth. His eyes rolled back into his head, the blue giving way to white as he fell back to the ground with a thump. "Shit" Dean growled, skidding over to the man's side and leaning his ear down to his mouth. He was still breathing, but only just. Dean hefted him into his arms, trying awkwardly to manoeuvre his way around the giant wings. He carried him over to the Impala and set him down carefully on the ground. The car was in bad shape: most of the windows missing, frame and roof dented, the passenger door missing, but he hoped it would still work. Whoever and whatever had crashed to Earth needed help, and that was Dean's job. Saving people, hunting the supernatural, and however supernatural the winged man may appear, he didn't seem violent or particularly evil. He just seemed broken.

 


	2. "I'm an angel of the Lord"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean brings back a broken angel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, here's chapter two. Not much else to say apart from reviews are very welcome, and please do point out any grammar or spelling mistakes, I'm not really one for extensive proof reading.

After sparking the engine back into life, Dean hauled the limp body into the back seat, cringing as he saw blood pool onto the leather, as the movement re-opened a couple of wounds on the man's torso. He then climbed into the front seat and pressed his foot to the accelerator, speeding up slowly. The car groaned a little as pieces of metal scraped against eachother, one door flapping uselessly; no-longer fitting to the bent frame.

"C'mon baby, just get to the motel for me." He murmured to the Impala, hitting the steering wheel lightly, willing it to last the rest of the journey.

 

The road seemed to stretch on forever as Dean drove along at 60mph, not wanting to tempt fate by going any faster. He narrowed his eyes against the spray of rain than started to fall through the shattered windscreen. Occasionally he would turn around to face the backseat, making sure the black-winged man hadn't died on him. It was hard to tell in the little light the moon and sporadic street lamps provided, so Dean could only hope he didn't have to deal with carrying a corpse into a motel room. It was going to be difficult at best to explain this to Sam without the guy being unable to explain anything himself. That was if Dean managed to help him enough to be able to talk... He shook his head, clearing away those thoughts. He didn't need any more blood on his hands. Literally or figuratively.

* * *

With the radio only half attached to the Impala by a thin piece of plastic and his phone burried somewhere, Dean could only guess that he had been about an hour on the road as the neon motel lights flashed into view. "Thank fuck for that." He sighed, parking the wrecked impala in the empty space and leaping out of the vehicle, immediately opening the backseat door that wasn't almost crumpled in two.

"Hey. Dude." He shook the shoulder of the hurt man in the back of the Impala, but to no reply. He still seemed to have a pulse though, which was a good sign at least. "Ok then, c'mon." He grunted, lifting the man into his arms again and carrying him over to number 265, which Sam had texted him earlier.

"Sammy! Open up, it's me!" Dean called through the door, his hands otherwise occupied. After a few moments, the door opened to Sam's face slowly evolving from pissed, to confused, to relieved and back to confused. His eyes flickered from Dean's scratched up face and back to the man in his arms. "No time to explain" Dean pushed his younger brother out of the way, taking two strides to the nearest bed and lowering the body onto it.

"Dean, what the hell?"

"Uh... It's kinda hard to explain, just help me would you? Go get the floss and a needle and the normal crap we need, okay?" Dean spoke without looking up, and Sam nodded, rushing off to geT the supplies.

He returned with an armfull of make-do medical equipment, including tooth floss, a sewing needle, a half empty bottle vodka, and some bandages.

"So... You gonna explain now?" Sam asked once he had emptied his arms onto the bed next to his brother.

Dean grunted in response, cutting off a length of floss with his teeth and threading it through the needle. "I was drivin' here and he literally just plopped down from the sky, wings and all" Dean could tell Sam was frowning, even without turning around. "Look, I know as little as you do. I just wanna fix him up, he didn't seem particularly evil when he landed naked on the Impala." He fixed his brother with a 'get-out-of-my-way-and-leave-me-alone' look before turning back to begin sewing up the nearest wound.

"He landed... Naked?" Sam began, only to recieve another dark look from Dean. "Ok, ok. I'll go phone Bobby..."

Dean grunted his approval around the needle in his mouth as he washed the irritated skin before him with a splash of vodka. The cold liquid on the man's torso seemed to wake him up a little, as he opened his unfocused eyes and shifted a little on the bed.

"Nope, don't you move. You'll pull out your stitches." Dean ordered, leaning over the bed to peer at the man's face. Now in brighter light, he could examine him more closely: his almond shaped eyes were still the same, deep yet clear blue they were before; framed by dark eyelashes that fluttered as he blinked up at the light, trying to focus on Dean. He had a straight nose, full, pale lips, and spectacularly messy hair. Most of it was spiked up with rainwater and crusted with blood, giving him a hedgehog kind of look. Dean would have found it slightly endearing, (not that he would admit that to himself) if the man wasn't something unknown, supernatural and winged. And well, a man.

Suddenly those intense eyes locked onto Dean's, and he was suddenly aware of how much he had been staring. He looked away, awkwardly searching for more wounds to sew up. "So er... What are you exactly? I mean you're obviously not a demon or a vamp... Never seen a shifter fall from the sky like that, so..." He looked up again and immediately regretted it. Those eyes were watching him again. They seemed to possess their own sort of gravity, keeping Dean's gaze locked on them.

"I'm..." He began again in that deep voice, though something about it was odd; like he hadn't spoken in a long time and had forgotten how to string words together. "I am an angel of the Lord." He wheezed.

Dean raised an eyebrow. "A what sorry?" He asked, disbelief written all over his face.

"An angel."

"Right... You probably have a concussion or something. Uh. I think that means you shouldn't sleep but..." He babbled, unsure of how to use this new information. An angle. Wings. Feathers. A real fucking angel... He didn't believe it. Angels didn't exist. There weren't any angels on Earth, only the bad guys. Only the things he and Sam had been brought up to salt 'n' burn.

"Do you... Do you have a name?" He asked the 'angel'.

He paused for a moment, head turned slightly to the side but his eyes still locked onto Dean's. "Castiel. My name is Castiel." He said with a sort of determination one might have when they were trying to convince themselves of something. He frowned, eyebrows coming together in a small crease, before he passed out for the second time.

"Ok so Bobby's gonna come up here with a tow truck for the Impala- yeah I saw it outside- and some books about... Whatever he might be." Sam strode into the room, automatically making it seem a lot smaller with his towering height.

"I know what he is." Dean said, wiping vodka off his hands and onto his jeans and standing up. "An angel." He said hesitantly, expecting a bitch-face from Sam.

"Oh... Wow." Sam didn't give his brother a bitch-face like expected. Instead, he looked genuinly interested, if not a little shocked. His eyes flickered between Dean and Castiel unconscious on the bed.

"Wait what, you believe that?" He asked incredulously. Since when did Sammy believe in the whole higher power crap?

"He has wings, Dean." Sam shrugged, ignoring Dean's expression completely. "What else do you know of that has a human body and wings?"

 Dean stared incredulously at his brother for a moment before turning back to look at Castiel. "Well, whatever. How long did Bobby say he'd be?"

Sam shrugged "About an hour or two..." He looked over at the Angel laying motionless on the cheap motel sheets. "Where do you think he came from? Heaven?" He asked after a moment's pause.

"Yeah, right" Dean scoffed "c'mon Sam, you can't seriously believe that he's an Angel, can you? I mean surely we'd have noticed if there were a bunch winged, naked dudes flying around. Dad would've said _something_ in his journal."

"Maybe they've been hidden until now. I don't know, it just kind of makes sense; if there are demons, there have gotta be Angels too." The two brothers lapsed into silence, both mulling over their thoughts. It _did_ make sense for there to be the good guys as well as the bad ones... But if they did exist, then where the hell had they been whilst all the hunters had been out risking their asses for the cause?

Dean checked Castiel over another time, making sure he was still breathing and that his wounds weren't bleeding out allover the place. He seemed to be in a stable state, though both an arm and a wing seemed to be bent at an uncomfortable angle, and he was coated almost head to foot in a layer of blood and dirt and asphalt. Dean got up and went to the small bathroom, returning with a bowl of lukewarm water (the crappy motel taps didn't allow anything hotter) and a face cloth.

Sam had taken to reading their father's journal and was laying against the headboard of the second bed, so Dean left him to it, moving instead to the first bed and sitting back down in the place he had just vacated. He hesitated, surveying the body in front of him. He wasn't entirely sure where to start, so he picked the arm nearest to him, and carefully started wiping away dried blood and dirt.

* * *

Bobby arrived not long after Dean had finished methodically wiping the most easily accessible areas of the Angel.

The wings had proven to be the most difficult, each feather needing individual cleaning. He had sort of given up with the smaller feathers near the base of the wings and decided Castiel could probably do that himself once he had woken up. There was also something strangely intimate about the task, which Dean found slightly unnerving. It shouldn't have been awkward, really. He'd wiped blood from his brother's body and patched him up more times than he could count, but doing the same for this supposedly Angelic stranger was different.

Bobby knocked at the door, shouting something that sounded distinctly like "open up you idjits" through the thin plywood. Dean got up, dropping the now brownish face cloth into the bowl at his feet to let Bobby in, as Sam had apparently crashed, John Winchester's journal still open on his chest.

"What the hell have you boys got yourselves into now?" The older hunter asked, eyes immediately going passed Dean to the unconscious Angel. "Whatever, tell me on the way back. I've towed your car already, go and pick up the 'Angel' and I'll wake up sleeping beauty over there."

Dean nodded once in reply and stepped aside to let Bobby in. "You better have bought some Advil, my ribs are killing me." He muttered before gritting his teeth through the pain and hefting Castiel into his arms again. He wished for the second time that night that it had been a hot naked lady that had fallen from the sky instead, though not for the same reason this time. It turned out that lifting a full grown man with a broken rib wasn't exactly easy. Dean grunted loudly "Yeah if you don't have Advil, I'm gonna kill you, I swear" He muttered again to Bobby through his gritted teeth, as pain seared through his torso once again.


End file.
